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Sunday, March 2, 2014

This is post
is a departure from my usual family history posts.March 5, 2014 would have
been my mother’s 82nd birthday. Mom’s legacy lives on in many ways
in our family; her cooking, her humor (well….WE think it’s funny), her
incessant picture-taking (very much appreciated by this genealogist daughter!)
But there was one special thing Mom passed on to me that was not really shared
with my siblings (except for maybe my youngest sister…) - her love of dollhouse
miniatures.

Today’s post
focuses on one of my mother’s favorite hobbies. Warning – it’s a long one!!

As far back
as I can remember, Mom did crafty stuff – sewing, painting, fixing broken toys.
There wasn’t a lot of money so perhaps her “craftiness” was born out of
necessity. My first “dollhouse” memory was a large house she created out of
cardboard boxes for my Barbie doll – the furniture was fashioned out of smaller
cardboard boxes and thread spools. I loved it.

1964 Store Display

1964. That
year, Ideal Toy Company created a new line of dollhouse furniture – Petite
Princess – OMG! It was beautiful! It was expensive! Mom would take me to Sears
and Woolworth’s and we would drool over the tiny pieces, decorated with real
satins and velvets showcased in a “real” princess castle. The next year, Ideal
changed the name to Princess Patti and added more pieces. Still…..expensive.
Apparently we weren’t the only family who couldn’t afford the furniture. By
1966, Ideal stopped producing the line and the pieces were marked down
significantly. We went crazy!!! Bought it all!!

My PP house

Mom bought my
first REAL dollhouse to contain all my pieces. There were so many, I actually
hung a third floor inside the house to make more rooms.

We were
hooked..

We discovered
miniatures was an actual, respectable hobby. We found out there were actual
stores selling dollhouse miniatures. We found out there were miniature shows.
We experienced empty wallets.

The first
shop we found was “The Crafty Owl Shop” run by Hazel Smith. Hazel had a little
dollhouse museum in her shop – it cost 25 cents to enter. Except for the smell
of cigarette smoke that lingered in the air it was one our favorite places to
go on the weekends.

We began attending miniature shows. In those days there were at least two a year in our area. The first one I remember was in 1976.

1976 show sponsored by
"The Crafty Owl"

Roberta Glidden (dark hair) behind the counter
at her shop "The Storekeepers"

Amazingly,
one local promoter, Roberta Glidden, held her spring shows the first Saturday
in March. It became a tradition for me to take Mom to the show for her
birthday.

In 1976, Mom
built her first house using a pattern found in a Woman’s Day magazine. She quickly followed that with a General
Store built using the same pattern.

1976 - My mother's first house - my sister Betsy looks on

General Store - built for my brother
A bit worse for the wear after 30+ years

Partial Interior of the General Store

By that time,
I was 21 years old and busy starting my teaching career. Mom and I kept
attending shows together but I wasn’t too involved in doing anything else
miniature-wise. Not Mom.

The Yellow House - approx. 40" tall

Somewhere
between 1978 and 1980 Mom and her best friend, Emma decided it was time to
build themselves proper dollhouses. Mom was maybe 47 – her youngest child (of
5) was 15. Seemed like a good idea. She and Emma enrolled in a woodworking
class at the local Adult Ed center. They lasted 2 classes. Mom said, “I can
figure out the rest of it myself.” And she did – for months the entire living
room was taken up with balsa wood, tools and paint. The “Yellow House” was born. From then on the
Yellow House had a prominent place in the living room.

Money still
being tight, Mom made most of the items for the house. I bought the “Real-Life”
Furniture kits and built most of the furniture. Mom was making tiny books
(1000s of them), tiny foods out of Fimo clay, framing pictures cut from
magazines, lamps from Ping-Pong balls and deodorant containers. One thing about
my mother – ifonewas good, one-hundredwas better!

One of our first shows together.
Mom's head is cut off in the photo -oops!

In 1980, we
decided to share her work at some local shows. Not the “real” dollhouse
miniature shows – those were too expensive. We did several local women’s’ club
craft shows and a few school Christmas Fairs. People loved Mom’s work. It
wasn’t “artisan” quality, but that wasn’t her goal. She wanted to sell to
children and priced her work accordingly -10 cents for a picture, 75 cents for
a lamp made from beads. She was having a
ball. We named our company “Dorette Creations” in honor of Mom’s parents. [From
1940 -1950, my grandparents owned D’Orette Linens - named for my mother of
course. My grandmother created and sold placemats made from a new and unique
woven plastic fabric called Plexon. The story of this company will be the
subject of a future post.]

My eldest daughter playing in Omi's Yellow House - 1987

A gift for my daughters from their Omi - 1997 (pre-fire)

"A Gift from Omi"

In 1995, Mom
decided to build another house, this time for my two daughters, aged 10 and 6.
She purchased an Artply kit, “The Granville.” In late June of 1997 (I also
inherited the procrastination gene from my mother…) we moved the almost
finished dollhouse to our home. Then, on June 30 we had a house fire. While the
house (dollhouse that is; our house lost the top floor) wasn’t destroyed, it
suffered significant damage from smoke and movement by construction workers.
Mom’s gift to her granddaughters sat for 16 years. But I couldn’t bring myself
to get rid of it.

The "Hoarder House" today - a work in progress

Last year, I
decided to finish the house in memory of my mother who passed away in December
of 2011. I’ve named it the “Hoarder House”. It’s decorated to reflect my
mother’s tastes (blue onion wallpaper) and filled with objects that mirror her
hobbies – stamp and coin collecting, sewing, dollhouses, toys…lots of toys. I’m
temporarily stalled on that project but you can view my blog chronicling myprogress to date. I know Mom would be really happy to know I plan to finish
what she had started.

Mom at the Sturbridge show chatting with the late Tom Berkner

Two of Mom's best friends:
Emma and Barbara - 1990s??

In 2009 I created a room box which I presented to Mom for Easter that
year. I won the room box at one Roberta Glidden’s shows years before. The “Tea
Cozy” was built to house Mom’s collection of wire wicker furniture and tea
sets. Mom loved tea sets. She had dozens of them. I think her affinity for the
tiny sets (and maybe toys in general) may have originated with the loss of her
toys as a child.

Close-up of bay window
The valance is a piece of lace from a blouse that belonged to
my great-grandmother Sophie.

In 1938 Mom,
her mother and her beloved grandmother fled Vienna, Austria as Hitler’s reign
was terrorizing the city. As Jews, her father’s family business had been “sold”
to Hitler’s “representatives” and her father imprisoned.

At age 6, Mom found herself in a new country. Thankfully her father was
released in 1939 and the family was reunited. However, trauma such as that
never truly goes away. Over the years, Mom would often speak about the toys she
had to leave behind

The "Tea Cozy"

Jumping back
to 1965 for a moment. Our mutual love for that Ideal dollhouse furniture
resulted in my writing book about the furniture line with co-author Linda Gant.
Mom joined me at a 2010 miniature show to help me promote the “TheComplete
Reference Guide to Ideal’s 1964 and 1965 Petite Princess and Princess Patti
Dollhouse Furniture.”

Mom "manning" the table at the 2010 Danbury Miniature Show

Mom in NYC!
We went to the 2004 IGMA miniature show

It would be
one of the last mini-events we shared together. Mom had many health problems
and by 2011 she was on dialysis three times a week. By November 2011 she was
again in the hospital and on Dec. 2, 2011 my mother passed away surrounded by
her all children except me – I was in the hospital parking lot on my way to see
her. (That’s a story for another day.)

I miss my
mother. I think of her every day. I thank her for the gift she gave me – the
love of dollhouse miniatures. When I work on my “minis” I feel as though she is
with me. It was something we bonded over. It is something that will bind my
heart with hers forever.